Of Moons and Monsters

by P. T. Phronk

  She’d never been a role model before. This day was full of firsts. She struggled to think of something insightful to share with the drunks, but then Kimmy stormed up beside her.

  “Dean, how lovely to see you,” she said, her voice squeaky with a polish of fake politeness.

  “And you as well, Kimmy.”

  Dean sure seemed to have issues with a lot of people in town, the way they talked to him. Annie cleared her throat as Kimmy stared at her. “I guess I should get back to work.”

  Dean rubbed one of her shoulders and raised an eyebrow. “Good luck with that,” he said.

  Work was hard. Especially when Annie was still starving and craving a smoke the whole time. Luckily, she got a ten-minute break every four hours. Ten minutes didn’t seem like much—she often spent ten minutes staring out the window thinking about where she’d take her next nap—but it was a huge relief after hours of training.

  When she walked out the back of the grocery store, a loud crash made her jump.

  It was the lid of the big metal trash thing slamming shut. Mike stood in front of it with an empty plastic bag in his hands.

  “Oh, it’s you! Hey!” she said, waving, a cigarette dangling between her lips.

  He just stared and cocked his head, turning slightly, his legs tense, ready to run. Fuck; the people who worked here probably chased him off whenever they caught him digging through the trash. She marvelled at her luck, running into two different people from the bar in one night, but with the IGA being the only source of groceries in town, maybe it wasn’t such a big coincidence.

  “Don’t worry!” she said. “Actually, just stay there for a sec. I have an idea.”

  The deli meats section was closest to the back door, and she only had ten minutes. Like Kimmy did earlier with the chocolate bar, Annie grabbed two packs of bologna; one for her, one for Mike. She worked here, so it was free. Having a job was so rad.

  She went back outside and handed Mike his bologna. “For you. It’s free.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” he whispered.

  The fog swirled around them as they ate, staring at the tree line behind the store.

  “You were there. The other night, at Ducks. When the guy with the cigar came in. Do you remember anything?”

  Mike nodded, swallowing half a slice of meat whole. “Ma’m. Yes, ma’m.”

  “Every detail? You remember the whole night?”

  “Yeah. Everyone forgets a lot now. Especially since the fog came. Especially at the bar. Especially around that guy on the motorcycle.”

  “He’s been around town before?”

  Mike chewed, silent for a moment.

  “You don’t have to talk about it with me, if you don’t want to. He’s a man I’d avoid talking about if I could.”

  Mike shook his head. “It’s okay. I don’t mind talking. It’s just … it’s that most people don’t want to talk to me. With me. Mostly they talk at me. Mister Neville, he said his name was Neville, yeah, he comes around town. Even before you came.” Mike shivered, the fog around him dancing. “Always with his smoke. Stinking smoke stick. He blows it in people’s faces, rude, rude. Then they forget. He leaves and they forget he was there. They do the same thing with me. But you remember. Me, you remember me. Mister Neville, also, you remember.”

  Annie nodded. A string of bologna skin flapped from her mouth. “Yeah, but I don’t remember everything. Me and ‘Mister Neville’ have a history, so I know to try remembering, but I can’t ignore the smoke like you can.”

  “You know Linda too?” Mike asked.

  Annie nearly choked. “He mentioned her?”

  “Yes. He was very mean to you. He called you a moron, a red neck.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Then he blew his smoke. And he asked if your mother was still alive, and you said no. And he said his wasn’t either, but he had a new mother. No, mommy. He said it like that, like he was making fun, horsing around. He said he had a new mommy named Linda who he was living with, and maybe he’d take you home to meet her one day, and he laughed like that was really funny.”

  “So she’s alive. Linda is alive.” Annie couldn’t eat any more. Knowing Linda was still out there would give Stan the kick in the ass he needed to find her.

  “It’s what he said, yeah.”

  “Still doesn’t get us closer to knowing where she is,” Annie muttered.

  “Maybe she’s with all the smoke.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where the smoke all comes from, I mean.” He stared at the woods, where waves of the fog swirled between trees.

  “Yeah. Could be,” she muttered.

  “At the cave by the waterfall.”

  “Yeah.” Annie’s head snapped up. “Wait, what?”

  16. Thicker Than Water

  IN STAN’S DREAM, BOB’S NOSE was huge, and still growing. It became a flesh-colored, hooked beak with just a tiny human lower lip below it.

  “Bob!” Stan said, opening his arms to embrace his old friend. They stood in the middle of a tropical forest.

  “Bob? You are mistaken. I’m Toucan Sam, here to tell you all about breakfast.” His little human lip flapped against his beak as he talked, though not quite in sync with the words. Wrinkled skin covered the beak, which grossed Stan out, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, so his stomach still rumbled when the smell of strawberries and mangos filled the air.

  “I could use some breakfast,” Stan said, sitting down at a long table that looked like the ones he and Bob shared in New York City soup kitchens. A tree grew through a hole in the middle of it.

  “There’s Froot for you, if you know where to look.”

  Stan glanced around the forest. Screeches and growls echoed off the tropical canopy. “I don’t see any Froot,” he said, knowing that he was looking for the misspelled capital-F cereal rather than anything that grew from trees.

  Bird-Bob laughed. “Just follow your nose!”

  Clarity hit Stan for a moment. The forest flickered around him. “You mean Bloody’s nose. But we can’t track anything. The fog, it’s too thick; it’s blocking her.”

  The tree in the middle of the table rotated. The leaves on it expanded—except they weren’t leaves, but wooden panels, spiderwebbed with wires and slick with stinking oils. “Think about your signal to noise. Signal to nose! This fog? Noise. First things first, you cut that down. Then boost your signal—or the nose that detects it. Can I tell you something about astronomy?”

  “By all means.”

  “Astronomers don’t always look at things directly. Some of them planetary bodies are right bastards, defying detection like they know we’re looking for them and don’t want to be found. Ninety five percent of the universe is made of this dark stuff—hidden stuff we haven’t even glimpsed. But we know it’s there anyway. Ya know how?”

  Stan rubbed his temples. “How?”

  “Because dark matter’s got friends. We can’t see it, but it makes nice with what we can see. Makes it wiggle and waggle in ways it wouldn’t move on its own. The waggle, we can see. See? We look at movements of the unhidden and it gives away where the hidden is.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying if you want the Froot, you follow the worms! All these trees, and only the worms know where the Froot is. Just watch ‘em waggle. And the smell of worms is always strongest just after it rains. After the fog clears. A stronger signal. You see?”

  Stan didn’t, but he was having trouble concentrating with all the metaphors mixing in his head, and a metallic clanging that had filled the forest.

  Toucan Bob gestured at the paneled tree in the middle of the table. Boulder-sized Froot Loops had grown from its jutting panels—rings of artificially flavored cereal, spinning on their axes and rotating around each other like planets. Worms and insects crawled up, reaching for the Froot. “I’ve been watching the signals. There are so many, but if you know the right ones to look for, you just follow your nose.”

 
A squawk came from above. The sun was blocked out by a massive winged creature, flying even higher than the trees. Its silhouette was man-like, but with wings spread wide—like a demon. “Just watch out for the birds. They want the worm too.”

  The smell of dead worms filled Stan’s nose. “Okay, so, follow my nose,” he said. “Follow the worm. That’ll lead to Wilcox.”

  The array in the middle of the table disintegrated as it was overtaken, becoming a pile of wriggling worms. “You’re waking up,” Bob said. “Come see me in LA when you’ve solved your mess. This dream shit is hurtin’ my head.”

  Worms crawled across the table, up Stan’s hands, under his sleeves, up to his neck. “Thanks, old friend,” he said as the entire forest seemed to melt into wriggling pink mounds.

  His eyes snapped open. He was awake, but the smell of worms was still there, and something wet was still wrapped around his neck.

  “I could do it now. I could kill you.” The muffled voice was inches from Stan’s ear.

  He tried to sit up, but wet fingers around his neck tightened. The lodge was dark, with only slivers of light cutting through the boarded-up windows and reaching him on the couch.

  A pale face leaned over him. Dark eyes blinked. Miriam had escaped her silverware prison. “It is my turn for questions. Did you summon the demon?”

  “Don’t you get it? There is no demon. Wilcox lied to you so he could get to me.”

  She breathed deeply. The mask over her face bubbled; a drop of stinking water escaped and splashed onto Stan’s forehead. “We feel the demon approaching. Even now he is near.”

  “Then you’re even more delusional than I thought.”

  Her fingers tightened. The moist flaps of webbing between them were cold, and the sharp edges of her overgrown fingernails dug into his skin. Stan’s beating heart struggled to pump blood past the arteries her fingers compressed. “We felt the demon before the man you call Wilcox even arrived. Do you deny our feelings?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Stan said, his voice thin.

  Her mask bubbled with a sharp exhale. Was she laughing? “Your hubris is worse than his. Yet I believe you are sincere. The man Paul is sincere as well. He is our friend, and he is your friend.”

  “So we’re friends?”

  With her free hand, she pointed to the puckered skin of her forehead, where Stan had jammed a silver spoon into it. “Friends don’t do this. We are not friends. But we are even.”

  He heard a creaking off to the side, and the room brightened. Miriam squinted in the light as she looked Stan over again. She was trembling, as scared as he was.

  “Now,” another muffled voice said.

  “Yes, mother,” Miriam said. She leaned in closer to Stan and spoke quickly. “I hope you find your mother. The screams from the woods are unbearable. Many of my sisters and brothers have gone to help the man Wilcox. Some have not come back. The others don’t know it, but I fear we are trading one demon for another.”

  “Now!” Miriam’s mother shouted.

  The pressure came off Stan’s neck. He sat up in time to see her hunched form scrambling toward the lodge’s makeshift door, held open by another masked shagg wearing a spandex body suit. Stan flashed back to killing Dalla. He’d driven a stake through her heart after weeks of being held prisoner, knowing that if she lived, he’d only end up her prisoner for life. It made him appreciate Miriam’s mercy, even if he didn’t understand it.

  “Thank you,” he said to her as she disappeared into the fog.

  The urge to call 911 always hit Stan in these situations, even though it had become abundantly clear that the law was useless against the monsters he was up against. Yet every time he was attacked, mutilated, or in this case, denied a kidnapping victim, his eyes searched the room for a phone.

  Well, Paul was the law, sort of. Stan still found it weird that his childhood friend was the sheriff, but it was sort of like calling 911.

  “Dangit, Stan,” Paul said after Stan called and told him that Miriam escaped.

  “Her mother found her. She must have snuck past me while I was sleeping and cut Miriam out of the tub. She even brought another mask so Miriam could breathe. This wasn’t random; this was a planned rescue.”

  “Seems likely. But how?”

  “You’re the detective, Paul.”

  “I’m the sheriff. And you know as much as me about these things, if your theory is true, that a shagg’s a sort of vampire, same as any other monster.”

  Stan shut his eyes. His head pounded. “If that is true, family can always track family. They know … how did Dalla put it? I always know where my own blood is. It’s why I could never escape her; her blood mixed with mine, and then I was hers.”

  “So that explains it,” Paul said.

  “It should, but it doesn’t. Bloody can’t track anything here. It must work the same way, right? But instead of blood, she gets somebody’s scent temporarily up in that little doggy nose and can track it anywhere. Right? But whatever is preventing Bloody from following her nose has to be blocking vampires and shaggs from doing the same thing.”

  “Here’s my theory. That fog ain’t natural, I’ll tell you that. Maybe it’s the fog blocking these signals.”

  Stan remembered a snippet from the dream he’d been having before Miriam woke him up. Signal to nose. “Right.”

  A chair creaked on the end of the line as Paul stood up. “I’m lookin’ out the window of my lawyer’s office, and can’t see frickin’ Tweed’s Diner across the street. If the fog blocks tracking, then that’s not how Ruth found Miriam.”

  Stan winced as he put things together. “So someone told her I was here.”

  Paul was silent for a beat. “Stan, you don’t think … you know I wouldn’t.”

  “I know it wasn’t you, and …” He had to think. Annie wasn’t comfortable with holding Miriam hostage, but she wouldn’t betray him, would she? She was still pissed at him for the Bree thing, but that was in the past, wasn’t it? It was. She wouldn’t. There was no way. He slapped himself in the head three times, thwack thwack thwack, as if the suspicion of Annie betraying him would sprinkle out the back of his head like pepper.

  “Stan? What was that?”

  “Nothing. It couldn’t have been Annie either. And she’s the only one who can have any hope of tracking anything.”

  “If the dang fog would just go away.”

  They were back at square one. What did that even mean? Square one? Was it a reference to board games? He thought of Chutes and Ladders, with its numbered squares, and the damn wriggling pink chutes that would take you backwards. Follow the worms, Morgan had told him in the dream, but he couldn’t follow anything lately.

  The board covering the lodge’s door shifted. Stan stood wearily, ready for another army of shaggs to have a second shot at him. But it wasn’t a shagg—it was Annie, followed by a young guy with unkempt hair who Stan knew from somewhere.

  “I know where the fog is coming from!” Annie said, beaming.

  “Is that Annie?” Paul asked, his voice loud enough in the old phone that Annie could hear him.

  She grabbed the phone from Stan’s hand as he stood there like an idiot. She held the receiver in both hands and shouted into it. “Grab your shit and get over here, Paul! We’re ending this today!”

  17. Up River

  PAUL LEFT HIS LAWYER’S OFFICE with renewed optimism. The lawyer said the police misconduct allegations were frivolous at best. Plus, according to Annie, she knew where the fog was coming from, and she knew that Linda was alive. He ended the call with her after arranging where to meet, then headed home to pack up the supplies needed to kill a werewolf, just in case Stan’s insane theory was correct.

  As he walked to his car, he saw Joey Bussicio fade in from the fog, arguing with Bree outside of Tweed’s. He looked like crud, with bags under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept all night, and the bandages on his knuckles were likely from when they’d collided with Stan’s face. If Paul wasn’t so busy, Joey wou
ld be arrested for that. But given the man’s connections with, well, everyone in town, Paul’s legal troubles would only double if he messed with Joey.

  The town—Paul’s town—was still. The fog was so thick that the few people walking down Sandford Avenue seemed to appear and disappear like ghosts, which gave Paul an odd dread that forced a slick of sweat onto his balding head. The sound of opening his car door seemed muffled by the eerie stillness.

  He drove home. Florence was in the kitchen when he walked in, and she was wearing makeup.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul asked. Florence hadn’t worn makeup in months. Maybe years.

  She smiled. Her face was so beautiful when she smiled, which was another thing she didn’t do much of lately. “Nothing’s wrong, Paul. I’m going out.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You’re shaking.”

  She grabbed her keys, which clinked on the table like a jackhammer a few times before she got a grip on them. “The pain is bad today, that’s all. I can deal with it.”

  “Where are you going? Is this about those meetings?”

  She broke eye contact with him. “Paul, you know that we’re running out of time. I’ll be dead in a month. Or I’ll lose my mind, burn the house down, and wander off into the woods. I hear that’s what Linda did. There’s a man that has ridden into Newbury, and he has ideas for how to cure me … how to cure the others, too. Cure this town.”

  Paul tried to take her hand as she put on her coat and headed toward the door. “You’re putting your life in the hands of some quack?” A quack who could very well be Wilcox; Annie said she saw Florence at the church when she was attacked.

  “I’m just going for a few drinks to think this through, alone. Is that okay with you?” Florence asked.

  Paul stepped back. “Honey, I could never tell you what to do. Just be careful, okay? I love you.”

  Florence’s red lips formed a straight line. “I’ll be careful,” she said before rushing out the door.